Talk Money Tuesday- Setting Goals

Be careful what you wish for and how you plan to get it, or you won't. You can succeed in reaching your goals for building wealth for your lifetime use and passing it along to your heirs. But, in order to do it, you'll need to do things a bit differently from most people. Don't sit and wait for opportunity to come knocking, go look for Mr.Opportunity or create your own. If you ask wealthy people how they got that way, "They were determined to meet their financial goals". In order to direct your determination where it will help you the most, you must first identify what you have now. Assuming you've done that, the next step is to set your goals for the future.

Visualizing the Goal
What's the best way to set goals that will help motivate you to achieve your personal financial wants and needs? A purely monetary goal may not be a very powerful motivator: Most of us need to focus on tangible items or tangible benefits. One of thee first steps in goal setting is finding a concrete goal or goals that motivate us emotionally. How about that classic black Mercedes Benz, a brand new home, Cruise around the world. Spend a day or two making up a list of the things you've always wanted, and prioritize them. You'll probably find that you have some short-terms goals and some long-term goals. An example of a short-term goal might be creating a vacation fund to support your vacation plans for the next year. Example of long-term goals would include retirement planning objectives. Whatever it is, make sure these are your goals, not someone else. Once you have come up with the goals, do enough research on your goal so that you know it "inside and out". Imagine at least once a day how it would be to have your goal, and how your life would be improved by having it. If the goal can be represented by a picture, keep one or more pictures where you're bound to notice them.

Measuring the Goal
How to make your goal measurable, you need resources. How close you are to having the money to pay this price is a convenient way to measure your progress toward reaching your actual goal. In order to make your goals measurable, we suggest two steps: reducing your goals to a monetary amount and setting a deadline to reach the goal. Put it in writing. Be sure to keep your written goal somewhere where your are sure to see it. What will it take to reach your savings goal? Clink the link below and use the Savings Goal Calculator to help you find out. Enter in your savings plan and view graphically your financial results.

http://www.finance.cch.com/sohoApplets/Savings.asp